115-601: The Last Drop is a 2006 British-Romanian adventure war film by Colin Teague that was released direct to video . Teague collaborated with Gary Young , with whom he had previously worked with on British crime drama films Shooters and Spivs . The film is set during World War II , amidst Operation Market Garden . Captain Edward Banks ( Andrew Howard ) and Corporal Powell ( Neil Newbon ), both SOE undercover British Intelligence officers, are given command of
230-824: A "war propaganda film ". A 1978 Mondadori poll placed Alexander Nevsky among the world's 100 best motion pictures. Fiction Fiction is any creative work , chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals , events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history , fact , or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels , novellas , and short stories . More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium , including not just writings but also live theatrical performances , films , television programs , radio dramas , comics , role-playing games , and video games . Typically,
345-760: A 1990 series of short stories about the Vietnam War . Fictional works that explicitly involve supernatural, magical, or scientifically impossible elements are often classified under the genre of fantasy , including Lewis Carroll 's 1865 novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Lord of the Rings , and J. K. Rowling 's Harry Potter series. Creators of fantasy sometimes introduce imaginary creatures and beings such as dragons and fairies. Types of written fiction in prose are distinguished by relative length and include: Fiction writing
460-531: A British family on the home front; Edge of Darkness (1943) showed Norwegian resistance fighters, and The North Star (1943) showed the Soviet Union and its Communist Party . Towards the end of the war popular books provided higher quality and more serious stories for films such as Guadalcanal Diary (1943), Mervyn LeRoy 's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), and John Ford 's They Were Expendable (1945). The Soviet Union, too, appreciated
575-644: A Japanese perspective. These "generally fail to explain the cause of the war". In the decades immediately after the Second World War, Japanese films often focused on human tragedy rather than combat, such as The Burmese Harp (1956) and Fires on the Plain (1959). From the late 1990s, films started to take a positive view of the war and of Japanese actions. These nationalistic films, including Pride (1998), Merdeka 17805 (2001), and The Truth about Nanjing (2007), have emphasized positive traits of
690-424: A Japanese soldier beheads an American: the victim shows pain and his lips freeze in a scream, yet no blood spurts and his head does not fall off. Basinger points out that while this is physically unrealistic, psychologically it may not have been. The wartime audience was, she points out, well aware of friends and relatives who had been killed or who had come home wounded. The Axis powers similarly made films during
805-404: A certain point of view. The distinction between the two may be best defined from the viewpoint of the audience, according to whom a work is non-fiction if its people, settings, and plot are perceived entirely as historically or factually real, while a work is regarded as fiction if it deviates from reality in any of those areas. The distinction is further obscured by a philosophical understanding, on
920-482: A close second. The costliest war in U.S. history in terms of American life, this war has been the subject of, or the backdrop to, numerous films, documentaries and mini-series. One of the earliest films using the Civil War as its subject was D.W. Griffith 's 1910 silent picture, The Fugitive . Films that have the war as its main subject, or about a certain aspect of the war, include the 1989 film Glory , about
1035-447: A completely imaginary way or been followed by major new events that are completely imaginary (the genre of alternative history ). Or, it depicts impossible technology or technology that defies current scientific understandings or capabilities (the genre of science fiction ). Contrarily, realistic fiction involves a story whose basic setting (time and location in the world) is, in fact, real and whose events could believably happen in
1150-519: A conflict between "good" and "evil" as represented by the Allied forces and Nazi Germany whereas the Western portrays the conflict between civilized settlers and the savage indigenous peoples. James Clarke notes the similarity between a Western like Sam Peckinpah 's The Wild Bunch and "war-movie escapades" like The Dirty Dozen . The film historian Jeanine Basinger states that she began with
1265-475: A figure from history, Bonnie Prince Charlie , and takes part in the Battle of Prestonpans . Some works of fiction are slightly or greatly re-imagined based on some originally true story, or a reconstructed biography. Often, even when the fictional story is based on fact, there may be additions and subtractions from the true story to make it more interesting. An example is Tim O'Brien 's The Things They Carried ,
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#17328010227161380-700: A major impact on the creation and distribution of fiction, calling into question the feasibility of copyright as a means to ensure royalties are paid to copyright holders. Also, digital libraries such as Project Gutenberg make public domain texts more readily available. The combination of inexpensive home computers, the Internet, and the creativity of its users has also led to new forms of fiction, such as interactive computer games or computer-generated comics. Countless forums for fan fiction can be found online, where loyal followers of specific fictional realms create and distribute derivative stories. The Internet
1495-477: A powerful emotional impact. It was watched by some 20 million people in Britain in its six weeks of exhibition, making it what the critic Francine Stock called "one of the most successful films of all time". The 1925 American film The Big Parade depicted unglamorous elements of war: the protagonist loses his leg, and his friends are killed. William A. Wellman 's Wings (1927) showed aerial combat during
1610-411: A preconception of what the war film genre would be, namely that: What I knew in advance was what presumably every member of our culture would know about World War II combat films—that they contained a hero , a group of mixed types [of people], and a military objective of some sort. They take place in the actual combat zones of World War II, against the established enemies, on the ground, the sea, or in
1725-528: A quiet Russian and an extrovert southerner from Odessa, singing in his dugout. The many Soviet films about the Second World War include both large-scale epics such as Yury Ozerov 's Battle of Moscow (1985) and Mikhail Kalatozov 's more psychological The Cranes are Flying (1957) on the cruel effects of war; it won the 1958 Palme d'Or at Cannes. Japanese directors have made popular films such as Submarine I-57 Will Not Surrender (1959), Battle of Okinawa (1971) and Japan's Longest Day (1967) from
1840-610: A small unit dubbed "Matchbox". The objective of Matchbox is to retrieve Dutch gold and art treasures plundered by the Nazis, concealed within an underground bunker rigged with traps. Matchbox's mission is disrupted as they are downed before reaching their drop zone after facing hostile fire from German forces, which results in casualties. The surviving members include Powell, Private Alan Ives ( Nick Moran ), Flight Lieutenant Robert Oates ( Billy Zane ), Private David Wellings ( Rafe Spall ), and Sergeant Bill McMillan ( Sean Pertwee ). Oates, as
1955-570: A subset (written fiction that aligns to a particular genre ), or its opposite: an evaluative label for written fiction that comprises popular culture , as artistically or intellectually inferior to high culture . Regardless, fiction is commonly broken down into a variety of genres: categories of fiction, each differentiated by a particular unifying tone or style ; set of narrative techniques , archetypes , or other tropes; media content ; or other popularly defined criterion. Science fiction predicts or supposes technologies that are not realities at
2070-505: A traditional war film should have a hero, a group, and an objective, and that the group should contain "an Italian, a Jew, a cynical complainer from Brooklyn, a sharpshooter from the mountains, a midwesterner (nicknamed by his state, 'Iowa' or 'Dakota'), and a character who must be initiated in some way". Films based on real commando missions, like The Gift Horse (1952) based on the St. Nazaire Raid , and Ill Met by Moonlight (1956) based on
2185-501: A university or a similar institution, and with the continuation of such positions determined not by book sales but by critical acclaim by other established literary authors and critics. On the other hand, he suggests, genre fiction writers tend to support themselves by book sales. However, in an interview, John Updike lamented that "the category of 'literary fiction' has sprung up recently to torment people like me who just set out to write books, and if anybody wanted to read them, terrific,
2300-434: A written work of fiction that: Literary fiction is often used as a synonym for literature , in the narrow sense of writings specifically considered to be an art form. While literary fiction is sometimes regarded as superior to genre fiction, the two are not mutually exclusive, and major literary figures have employed the genres of science fiction, crime fiction , romance , etc., to create works of literature. Furthermore,
2415-508: Is a part of media studies. Examples of prominent fictionalization in the creative arts include those in the general context of World War II in popular culture and specifically Nazi German leaders such as Adolf Hitler in popular culture and Reinhard Heydrich in popular culture . For instance, American actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin portrayed the eccentric despot Adenoid Hynkel in the 1940 satirical film The Great Dictator . The unhinged, unintelligent figure fictionalized real events from
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#17328010227162530-446: Is also used for the development of blog fiction , where a story is delivered through a blog either as flash fiction or serial blog, and collaborative fiction , where a story is written sequentially by different authors, or the entire text can be revised by anyone using a wiki . The definition of literary fiction is controversial. It may refer to any work of fiction in a written form. However, various other definitions exist, including
2645-439: Is characterized by a lesser degree of adherence to realistic or plausible individuals, events, or places, while the umbrella genre of realistic fiction is characterized by a greater degree. For instance, speculative fiction may depict an entirely imaginary universe or one in which the laws of nature do not strictly apply (often, the sub-genre of fantasy ). Or, it depicts true historical moments, except that they have concluded in
2760-496: Is known as fictionalization . The opposite circumstance, in which the physical world or a real turn of events seem influenced by past fiction, is commonly described by the phrase " life imitating art ". The latter phrase is popularity associated with the Anglo-Irish fiction writer Oscar Wilde . The alteration of actual happenings into a fictional format, with this involving a dramatic representation of real events or people,
2875-446: Is known as both fictionalization , or, more narrowly for visual performance works like in theatre and film, dramatization . According to the academic publication Oxford Reference , a work set up this way will have a "narrative based partly or wholly on fact but written as if it were fiction" such that "[f]ilms and broadcast dramas of this kind often bear the label 'based on a true story'." In intellectual research, evaluating this process
2990-492: Is most long-established in the realm of literature (written narrative fiction), the broad study of the nature, function, and meaning of fiction is called literary theory , and the narrower interpretation of specific fictional texts is called literary criticism (with subsets like film criticism and theatre criticism also now long-established). Aside from real-world connections, some fictional works may depict characters and events within their own context, entirely separate from
3105-427: Is often described as "elegantly written, lyrical, and ... layered". The tone of literary fiction can be darker than genre fiction, while the pacing of literary fiction may be slower than popular fiction. As Terrence Rafferty notes, "literary fiction, by its nature, allows itself to dawdle, to linger on stray beauties even at the risk of losing its way". Based on how literary fiction is defined, genre fiction may be
3220-407: Is the process by which an author or creator produces a fictional work. Some elements of the writing process may be planned in advance, while others may come about spontaneously. Fiction writers use different writing styles and have distinct writers' voices when writing fictional stories. The use of real events or real individuals as direct inspiration for imaginary events or imaginary individuals
3335-664: The Algerian War (1954–1956). It was shot on location as an Italo-Algerian co-production. It had the black and white newsreel style of Italian neorealism , and even-handedly depicts violence on both sides. It won various awards including Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival . It was attacked by French critics and was for five years banned in France as well as Jamila, the Algerian (1958). Few films before
3450-411: The Battle of Stalingrad . Feature films made in the west during the war were subject to censorship and were not always realistic in nature. One of the first to attempt to represent violence, and which was praised at the time for "gritty realism", was Tay Garnett 's Bataan (1943). The depiction actually remained stylised. Jeanine Basinger gives as an example the "worst image for stark violence" when
3565-658: The Indonesian war of independence (1945–1949). Two other films about the same period portray the Indonesian equivalent of the Chinese Long March : Usmar Ismail 's Darah dan Doa ( The Long March , literally "Blood and Prayer", 1950) and Mereka Kembali ( They Return , 1975). Each of these films interprets the past from the perspective of its own time. The more recent Merdeka (Freedom) trilogy (2009–2011), starting with Merah Putih ("Red and White",
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3680-838: The Korean War ; the most popular subjects are the Second World War and the American Civil War . The stories told may be fiction , historical drama , or biographical . Critics have noted similarities between the Western and the war film. Nations such as China, Indonesia, Japan, and Russia have their own traditions of war film, centred on their own revolutionary wars but taking varied forms, from action and historical drama to wartime romance. Subgenres, not necessarily distinct, include anti-war , comedy , propaganda , and documentary . There are similarly subgenres of
3795-705: The Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. The film cuts to an (American) "helicopter-eye view", contrasting painfully with the human tenderness seen earlier. Dino Mustafić's Remake (2003), written by Zlatko Topčić , tells the parallel coming-of-age stories of a father living in Sarajevo during World War II and his son living through the Siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War . According to Topčić,
3910-572: The Second World War came from Britain and combined the functions of documentary and propaganda. Films such as The Lion Has Wings and Target for Tonight were made under the control of the Films Division of the Ministry of Information. The British film industry began to combine documentary techniques with fictional stories in films like Noël Coward and David Lean 's In Which We Serve (1942)—"the most successful British film of
4025-497: The battle of the Atlantic . Others, like The Dam Busters (1954), with its exciting tale of the inventor Barnes Wallis 's unorthodox bouncing bomb and its distinctive theme music , were true stories. The Dam Busters became the most popular film in Britain in 1955, and remained a favourite as of 2015 with a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes , though, partly because it celebrated an "exclusively British [victory]", it failed in
4140-422: The human condition . In general, it focuses on "introspective, in-depth character studies" of "interesting, complex and developed" characters. This contrasts with genre fiction where plot is the central concern. Usually in literary fiction the focus is on the "inner story" of the characters who drive the plot, with detailed motivations to elicit "emotional involvement" in the reader. The style of literary fiction
4255-521: The 18th and 19th centuries. They were often associated with Enlightenment ideas such as empiricism and agnosticism . Realism developed as a literary style at this time. New forms of mass media developed in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, including popular-fiction magazines and early film. Interactive fiction was developed in the late-20th century through video games. Certain basic elements define all works of narrative , including all works of narrative fiction. Namely, all narratives include
4370-473: The 1950s and 1960s. War film production in the United Kingdom and United States reached its zenith in the mid-1950s. Its popularity in the United Kingdom was brought on by the critical and commercial success of Charles Frend 's The Cruel Sea (1953). Like others of the period, The Cruel Sea was based on a bestselling novel, in this case the former naval commander Nicholas Monsarrat 's story of
4485-733: The American market. A large number of war films were made in the 1955–1958 period in particular. In 1957 alone, Bitter Victory , Count Five and Die , The Enemy Below , Ill Met by Moonlight , Men in War , The One That Got Away , and Seven Thunders , and the highly successful, critically acclaimed pictures The Bridge on the River Kwai (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture that year ) and Paths of Glory were released. Some, such as Bitter Victory , focused more on
4600-755: The Americans. Similarly, the country's films about the Korean War show victory without help from the Chinese. The film scholar Johannes Schönherr concludes that the purpose of these films is "to portray North Korea as a country under siege", and that since the U.S. and its "puppet" South Korea invaded the North once, they would do so again. Gillo Pontecorvo 's dramatic The Battle of Algiers (( Italian : La battaglia di Algeri ; Arabic : معركة الجزائر ; French : La Bataille d'Alger ), 1966) portrayed events in
4715-893: The Central Powers and the Allies produced war documentaries. The films were also used as propaganda in neutral countries like the United States. Among these was a film shot on the Eastern Front by official war photographer to the Central Powers, Albert K. Dawson : The Battle and Fall of Przemysl (1915), depicting the Siege of Przemyśl , disastrous for the Austrians, with incidents reenacted using soldiers as extras. The 1915 Australian film Within Our Gates (also known as Deeds that Won Gallipoli ) by Frank Harvey
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4830-635: The Golden Mulberry at the Udine Far East Film Festival, but was criticised for its nationalistic sympathy with kamikaze pilots. The wartime authorities in both Britain and America produced a wide variety of documentary films. Their purposes included military training, advice to civilians, and encouragement to maintain security. Since these films often carried messages, they grade into propaganda. Similarly, commercially produced films often combined information, support for
4945-460: The Great War" without attempting to classify these. However, some directors and critics have offered at least tentative definitions. The director Sam Fuller defined the genre by saying that "a war film's objective, no matter how personal or emotional, is to make a viewer feel war." John Belton identified four narrative elements of the war film within the context of Hollywood production: a)
5060-463: The Japanese military and contended that the Japanese were victims of post-war vindictiveness and viciousness. Such films have, however, been subject to protest for revisionism . The Eternal Zero (2013) narrates the tale of a Zero fighter pilot who is considered a coward by his comrades, as he returns alive from his missions. It broke the record takings for a Japanese live action film, and won
5175-431: The Japanese state as one great family and the Japanese people as an "innocent, suffering, self-sacrificing people". Dower comments that the perversity of this image "is obvious: it is devoid of any recognition that, at every level, the Japanese also victimized others." According to Andrew Pulver of The Guardian , the public fascination with war films became an "obsession", with over 200 war films produced in each decade of
5290-605: The Maine Victims , Blanket-Tossing of a New Recruit , and Soldiers Washing Dishes . These non-combat films were accompanied by "reenactments" of fighting, such as of Theodore Roosevelt 's "Rough Riders" in action against the Spanish, staged in the United States. During the First World War, many films were made about life in the war. Topics included prisoners of war, covert operations, and military training. Both
5405-615: The Russian people to battle, actual fighting, Germans surrendering and dead, and atrocities including murdered children and hanged civilians. It won an Academy Award in 1943 for best documentary. Newsreel cameras were similarly rushed to Stalingrad early in 1943 to record "the spectacle which greeted the Russian soldiers"—the starvation of Russian prisoners of war in the Voropovono camp by the German Sixth Army , defeated in
5520-629: The Second Sino–Japanese War from 1937 onwards did war film become a serious genre in China, with nationalistic films such as Shi Dongshan 's Protect Our Land (1938). The Chinese Civil War, too, attracted films such as Cheng Yin 's From Victory to Victory (1952). A more humanistic film set in the same period is Xie Jin 's The Cradle (1979), while more recent large-scale commercial films include Lu Chuan 's City of Life and Death (2009). Chinese directors have repeatedly attempted to cover
5635-458: The Second World War, for propaganda and other purposes. In Germany, the army high command brought out Sieg im Westen ("Victory in the West", 1941). Other Nazi propaganda films had varied subjects, as with Kolberg (1945), which depicts stubborn Prussian resistance in the Siege of Kolberg (1807) to the invading French troops under Napoleon . The propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels chose
5750-504: The air. They contain many repeated events, such as mail call, all presented visually with appropriate uniforms , equipment, and iconography of battle. Further, Basinger considers Bataan to provide a definition-by-example of "the World War II combat film", in which a diverse and apparently unsuited group of "hastily assembled volunteers" hold off a much larger group of the enemy through their "bravery and tenacity". She argues that
5865-532: The atrocities committed by the Japanese during the Nanjing Massacre (1937–1938), with films such as the political melodrama Massacre in Nanjing , Mou Tun Fei 's docudrama Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre , and the "contrived Sino–Japanese romance" Don't Cry, Nanking . Zhang Yimou 's epic Chinese film Flowers of War (2011), based on Geling Yan 's novel, portrays the violent events through
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#17328010227165980-664: The attempted invasion of the Russian city of Novgorod by the Teutonic Knights . By April 1939 the film had been seen by 23,000,000 people. In 1941 the director and three others were awarded the Stalin Prize for their contributions. The film features a musical score by the classical composer Sergei Prokofiev , considered by artists such as the composer André Previn the best ever written for cinema. Russell Merritt, writing in Film Quarterly , describes it as
6095-604: The audience's willing suspension of disbelief . The effects of experiencing fiction, and the way the audience is changed by the new information they discover, has been studied for centuries. Also, infinite fictional possibilities themselves signal the impossibility of fully knowing reality, provocatively demonstrating philosophical notions, such as there potentially being no criterion to measure constructs of reality. In contrast to fiction, creators of non-fiction assume responsibility for presenting information (and sometimes opinion) based only in historical and factual reality. Despite
6210-415: The audience, including elements such as romance , piracy , and religious ceremonies . Heroic romance was developed in medieval Europe , incorporating elements associated with fantasy , including supernatural elements and chivalry . The structure of the modern novel was developed by Miguel de Cervantes with Don Quixote in the early-17th century. The novel became a primary medium of fiction in
6325-497: The best of popular Indonesian cinema". It was the first Indonesian film to become well known internationally. War has been the Soviet Union's cinema's major genre, becoming known indeed as the "cinema front", and its war films ranged from grim portrayals of atrocities to sentimental and even quietly subversive accounts. Leonid Lukov 's popular and "beautiful" Two Warriors (1943) depicted two stereotypical Soviet soldiers,
6440-614: The bombs, killing Kessler. The rest of the British crew make it out, and Voller and Beck sneak aboard posing as Americans. The loot was delivered to the British Government and displayed in a museum. Beck and Voller steal the loot from the museum and head to Switzerland . A few years later, the British survivors return to Arnhem. War film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare , typically about naval , air , or land battles, with combat scenes central to
6555-583: The bunker in Arnhem where the treasure is stored. Dutch resistance fighters Benitta ( Lucy Gaskell ) and Saskia (Coral Beed) locate the stolen loot beneath their farm and upon finding that it is about to transported to Berlin by Kessler, inform the British Intelligence. Benitta meets Powell at a nearby church, who then discloses his affiliation with British Intelligence to Matchbox. Oates leads his troops to Arnhem, while Baker and Powell head to
6670-425: The bunker. Baker diffuses booby traps along the way and they soon secure the loot. Realising Kessler is coming, the group booby traps the bunker with explosives. Powell plans to steal a sea plane and divert it to Britain with the loot on board. Following a shoot out between the two forces in which Baker is shot, Powell traps Kessler inside the bunker but is shot before boarding the plane. Baker wakes up and detonates
6785-523: The capture of the German commander of Crete, inspired fictional adventure films such as The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Train (1964), and Where Eagles Dare (1968). These used the war as a backdrop for spectacular action. Darryl F. Zanuck produced the 178 minute documentary drama The Longest Day (1962), based on the first day of the D-Day landings , achieving commercial success and Oscars. It
6900-704: The climactic ends of war films. Not all critics agree, either, that war films must be about 20th-century wars. James Clarke includes Edward Zwick 's Oscar-winning Glory (1990) among the war films he discusses in detail; it is set in the American Civil War , and he lists six other films about that war which he considers "notable". The screenwriter and scholar Eric R. Williams identifies war films as one of eleven super-genres in his screenwriters' taxonomy , claiming that all feature-length narrative films can be classified as belonging to one of them. The British military historian Antony Beevor "despair[s]" at how film-makers from America and Britain "play fast and loose with
7015-562: The colours of the flag of the new Indonesia), revisits the campaign for independence through the lives of a diverse group of cadets who become guerillas. Karya's November 1828 (1979) looks at Indonesia's struggle for independence through historical drama about the Java or Diponegoro War (1825–1830), though the colonial enemy was the same, the Dutch . Deanne Schultz considered it "a valuable interpretation" of Indonesian history that "embodies
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#17328010227167130-424: The combat film is not a subgenre but the only genuine kind of war film. Since she notes that there were in fact only five true combat films made during the Second World War, in her view these few films, central to the genre, are outweighed by the many other films that are only just war films. However, other critics such as Russell Earl Shain propose a far broader definition of war film, to include films that deal "with
7245-494: The comment that "for all its epic pretensions (as if epic were a matter of running time, tumescent music and earnest voice-over pronouncements), the movie works best as a bang-and-boom action picture". Steven Spielberg 's Saving Private Ryan (1998) uses hand-held camera, sound design, staging, and increased audio-visual detail to defamiliarise viewers accustomed to conventional combat films, so as to create what film historian Stuart Bender calls "reported realism", whether or not
7360-804: The common Japanese soldier as an individual and as a family man, and even enemy Chinese soldiers are presented as individuals, sometimes fighting bravely. Once war with the United States was declared, the Japanese conflict became known as the Pacific War . Japanese film critics worried that even with Western film techniques, their film output failed to represent native Japanese values. The historian John Dower found that Japanese wartime films had been largely forgotten, as "losers do not get reruns", yet they were so subtle and skilful that Frank Capra thought Chocolate and Soldiers unbeatable. Heroes were typically low-ranking officers, not samurai , calmly devoted to his men and his country. These films did not personalise
7475-581: The context of the real world. One realistic fiction sub-genre is historical fiction , centered around true major events and time periods in the past. The attempt to make stories feel faithful to reality or to more objectively describe details, and the 19th-century artistic movement that began to vigorously promote this approach, is called literary realism , which incorporates some works of both fiction and non-fiction. Storytelling has existed in all human cultures, and each culture incorporates different elements of truth and fiction into storytelling. Early fiction
7590-670: The cost of authenticity. Although the 1918 Finnish Civil War between Whites and Reds remained a controversial topic a century later in Finland , many Finnish filmmakers have taken up the subject, often basing their work on a book. In 1957, Toivo Särkkä 's 1918 , based on Jarl Hemmer 's play and novel, was screened at the 7th Berlin International Film Festival . Recent films include Lauri Törhönen 's 2007 The Border , and Aku Louhimies 's 2008 Tears of April , based on Leena Lander 's novel. Perhaps
7705-492: The destructive impact of American military presence on village life. The violent action films Shiri (1999) and Joint Security Area (2000) presented North Korea in a favourable light. Films in North Korea were made by government film studios and had clear political messages. The first was My Home Village (1949), on the liberation of Korea from the Japanese, presented as the work of Kim Il Sung without help from
7820-416: The drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them. Themes explored include combat , survival and escape, camaraderie between soldiers , sacrifice, the futility and inhumanity of battle, the effects of war on society, and the moral and human issues raised by war. War films are often categorized by their milieu, such as
7935-442: The elements of character , conflict , narrative mode , plot , setting , and theme . Characters are individuals inside a work of story, conflicts are the tension or problem that drives characters' thoughts and actions, narrative modes are the ways in which a story is communicated, plots are the sequence of events in a story, settings are the story's locations in time and space, and themes are deeper messages or interpretations about
8050-401: The enemy and therefore lacked hatred, though Great Britain could figure as the "cultural enemy". For Japanese film-makers, war was not a cause but more like a natural disaster, and "what mattered was not whom one fought but how well". Asian enemies, especially the Chinese, were often portrayed as redeemable and even possible marriage partners. Japanese wartime films do not glorify war, but present
8165-503: The entire breadth of the war. Some films deal with the human aspects of the war, such as The Red Badge of Courage (1951), or Shenandoah (1965), on the tragedy that the war inflicted on the civilian population. Ken Burns 's The Civil War is the most-watched documentary in the history of PBS . The first war films come from the Spanish–American War of 1898. Short "actualities"—documentary film-clips—included Burial of
8280-513: The eyes of a 13-year-old girl. Many Indonesian films deal with the occupation of the archipelago by the Japanese during the Second World War. Teguh Karya 's Doea Tanda Mata ( Mementos , literally "Two Eye Marks", 1985) covers the limited nationalist resistance to Dutch colonial rule in the 1930s. A third group of films such as Enam Djam di Jogja ( Six Hours in Yogyakarta , 1951) and Serangan Fajar ( Attack at Dawn , 1983) covers
8395-516: The facts", yet imply that "their version is as good as the truth". For example, he calls the 2000 American film U-571 a "shameless deception" for pretending that a US warship had helped to win the Battle of the Atlantic—seven months before America entered the war. He is equally critical of Christopher Nolan 's 2017 film Dunkirk with its unhistorically empty beaches, low-level air combat over
8510-474: The fictionality of a work is publicly expressed, so the audience expects the work to deviate to a greater or lesser degree from the real world rather than presenting, for instance, only factually accurate portrayals or characters who are actual people. Because fiction is generally understood as not adhering to the real world, the themes and context of a work, such as if and how it relates to real-world issues or events, are open to interpretation . Since fiction
8625-512: The fighting, the successful South Korean action film Piagol about leftist guerrilla atrocities encouraged other film-makers. The 1960s military government punished pro-communist film-makers and gave Grand Bell Awards to films with the strongest anti-communist message. The Taebaek Mountains (1994) dealt with leftists from the south who fought for the communists, while Silver Stallion (1991) and Spring in My Hometown (1998) showed
8740-813: The film Pearl Harbor 's US-biased portrayal of events is a compensation for technical assistance received from the US armed forces, noting that the premiere was held on board a U.S. Navy carrier. In another case, the U.S. Navy objected to elements of Crimson Tide , especially mutiny on board an American naval vessel, so the film was produced without their assistance. The film historian Jonathan Rayner observes that such films "have also clearly been intended to serve vital propagandist, recruitment and public relations functions". The first Chinese war films were newsreels like Battle of Wuhan (1911) and Battle of Shanghai (1913). Still in films such as Xu Xinfu 's Battle Exploits (1925), war featured mainly as background. Only with
8855-609: The first formal unit of the Union Army during the American Civil War to be made up entirely of Black volunteers. Some films such as Gettysburg focused on a single battle during the war, or even on a single incident, like the French short film La Rivière du Hibou ( An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ) and Disney 's The Great Locomotive Chase (1956). Others like the 1993 miniseries North and South spanned
8970-478: The genre is for the most part well defined and uncontentious, since war films are simply those about war being waged in the 20th century, with combat scenes central to the drama. However, Neale notes, films set in the American Civil War or the American Indian Wars of the 19th century were called war films in the time before the First World War. The critic Julian Smith argues, on the contrary, that
9085-508: The greatest screenplay ever written for the motion-picture medium"; Richard Attenborough 's satirical anti-war musical comedy based on Joan Littlewood 's play of the same name, Oh! What a Lovely War (1969); Spielberg's 2011 war drama War Horse was based on Michael Morpurgo 's children's novel of the same name . Many of the films promoted as "documentaries" added context to authentic battlefield scenes by staging critical events, and invented episodes and dialog to enhance excitement at
9200-407: The historical subject as suitable for the worsening situation facing Nazi Germany when it was filmed from October 1943 to August 1944. At over eight million marks, using thousands of soldiers as extras and 100 railway wagonloads of salt to simulate snow, it was the most costly German film made during the war. The actual siege ended with the surrender of the town; in the film, the French generals abandon
9315-574: The imperial period. Plasmatic narrative, following entirely invented characters and events, was developed through ancient drama and New Comedy . One common structure among early fiction is a series of strange and fantastic adventures as early writers test the limits of fiction writing. Milesian tales were an early example of fiction writing in Ancient Greece and Italy. As fiction writing developed in Ancient Greece, relatable characters and plausible scenarios were emphasized to better connect with
9430-441: The known physical universe: an independent fictional universe . The creative art of constructing such an imaginary world is known as worldbuilding . Literary critic James Wood argues that "fiction is both artifice and verisimilitude ", meaning that it requires both creative inventions as well as some acceptable degree of believability among its audience, a notion often encapsulated in the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge 's idea of
9545-464: The last of the traditional war films, while the controversy around the help given by the U.S. Army and Zanuck's "disregard for Pentagon relations" changed the way that Hollywood and the Army collaborated. Zanuck, by then an executive at 20th Century Fox , set up an American–Japanese co-production for Richard Fleischer 's Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970) to depict what "really happened on December 7, 1941" in
9660-401: The late 1970s about the Vietnam War actually depicted combat; exceptions include The Green Berets (1968). Critics such as Basinger explain that Hollywood avoided the subject because of opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War , making the subject divisive; in addition, the film industry was in crisis, and the army did not wish to assist in making anti-war films. From
9775-798: The late 1970s, independently financed and produced films showed Hollywood that Vietnam could be treated in film. Successful but very different portrayals of the war in which America had been defeated included Michael Cimino 's The Deer Hunter (1978), and Francis Ford Coppola 's Apocalypse Now (1979). With the shift in American politics to the right in the 1980s, military success could again be shown in films such as Oliver Stone 's Platoon (1986), Stanley Kubrick 's Full Metal Jacket (1987) and John Irvin 's Hamburger Hill (1987). The Vietnamese director Nguyễn Hồng Sến [ vi ] 's The Abandoned Field: Free Fire Zone ( Cánh đồng hoang , 1979) gives an "unnerving and compelling .. subjective-camera-eye-view" of life under helicopter fire in
9890-534: The metaphor of hunting to criticise the aggressiveness of Spanish fascism . It won the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 16th Berlin International Film Festival in 1966. Ken Loach 's Land and Freedom ( Tierra y Libertad , 1995), loosely based on George Orwell 's Homage to Catalonia , follows a British communist through the war to reveal the painful contradictions within the anti-fascist Republican side. Samuel Fuller 's The Steel Helmet (1951)
10005-508: The more the merrier. ... I'm a genre writer of a sort. I write literary fiction, which is like spy fiction or chick lit". Likewise, on The Charlie Rose Show , he argued that this term, when applied to his work, greatly limited him and his expectations of what might come of his writing, so he does not really like it. He suggested that all his works are literary, simply because "they are written in words". Literary fiction often involves social commentary , political criticism , or reflection on
10120-665: The most famous film about the Finnish Civil War is Edvin Laine 's 1968 Here, Beneath the North Star , based on the first two books of Väinö Linna 's Under the North Star trilogy; it describing the civil war from the losing side, Finland's Red Guards . The Spanish Civil War has attracted directors from different countries. Sam Wood 's For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), based on Ernest Hemingway 's book of
10235-493: The one hand, that the truth can be presented through imaginary channels and constructions, while, on the other hand, works of the imagination can just as well bring about significant new perspectives on, or conclusions about, truth and reality. All types of fiction invite their audience to explore real ideas, issues, or possibilities using an otherwise imaginary setting or using something similar to reality, though still distinct from it. The umbrella genre of speculative fiction
10350-465: The popular Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) starring John Wayne . U.S. Marines considered Sands of Iwo Jima visually authentic, but found Lewis Milestone's Battle Cry (1955), with its attention to the lives of the men, the more realistic film. The formula for a successful war film consisted, according to Lawrence Suid, of a small group of ethnically diverse men; an unreasonable senior officer; cowards became heroic, or died. Jeanine Basinger suggests that
10465-514: The portrayal is genuinely more realistic. Jeanine Basinger notes that critics experienced it as "groundbreaking and anti-generic", with, in James Wolcott's words, a "desire to bury the cornball, recruiting poster legend of John Wayne: to get it right this time"; and that combat films have always been "grounded in the need to help an audience understand and accept war". Its success revived interest in World War II films. Others tried to portray
10580-480: The propaganda value of film, to publicise both victories and German atrocities. Ilya Kopalin's documentary Moscow Strikes Back ( Russian : Разгром немецких войск под Москвой , literally "The rout of the German troops near Moscow"), was made during the Battle of Moscow between October 1941 and January 1942. It depicted civilians helping to defend the city, the parade in Red Square and Stalin 's speech rousing
10695-456: The psychological battle between officers and egotism rather than events during the war. The Bridge on the River Kwai brought a new complexity to the war picture, with a sense of moral uncertainty surrounding war. By the end of the decade the "sense of shared achievement" which had been common in war films "began to evaporate", according to Pulver. Hollywood films in the 1950s and 1960s could display spectacular heroics or self-sacrifice, as in
10810-783: The reality of the war, as in Joseph Vilsmaier 's Stalingrad (1993), which The New York Times said "goes about as far as a movie can go in depicting modern warfare as a stomach-turning form of mass slaughter". Many war films have been produced with the cooperation of a nation's military forces. Since the Second World War, the United States Navy has provided ships and technical guidance for films such as Top Gun . The U.S. Air Force assisted with The Big Lift , Strategic Air Command and A Gathering of Eagles , which were filmed on Air Force bases; Air Force personnel appeared in many roles. Critics have argued that
10925-430: The roles of civilians, espionage agents, and soldiers in any of the aspects of war (i.e. preparation, cause, prevention, conduct, daily life, and consequences or aftermath.)" Neale points out that genres overlap, with combat scenes for different purposes in other types of film, and suggests that war films are characterised by combat which "determines the fate of the principal characters". This in turn pushes combat scenes to
11040-599: The same name , portrays the fated romance between an American played by Gary Cooper and a partisan played by Ingrid Bergman against the backdrop of the civil war. The epic 168-minute film with its landscapes shot in Technicolor and a "beautiful" orchestral score was a success both with audiences and with critics. Alain Resnais 's Guernica (1950) uses Picasso 's 1937 painting of the same name to protest against war. Carlos Saura 's La Caza (The Hunt, 1966) uses
11155-515: The sea, and rescues mainly by the "little ships". Beevor feels, however, that Continental European film-makers are often "far more scrupulous"; for example, in his view the 2004 German film Downfall accurately depicted the historical events of Hitler's final days in his Berlin bunker, and he considers the 1965 French film The 317th Platoon , set in Vietnam, "the greatest war movie ever made". The 1966 film The Battle of Algiers is, he argues,
11270-546: The senior member, is appointed to lead the group, as they do not know Powell and Banks are Intelligence Agents. Renegade German forces led by Lieutenant Jergen Voller ( Alexander Skarsgård ) who is Kessler's brother, alongside Corporal Dieter Max ( David Ginola ) and Sergeant Hans Beck ( Karel Roden ), also attempt to retrieve the Dutch gold and art treasures. Voller captures Gustav Hansfeldt ( Steve Speirs ), right hand man of SS Major Kessler ( Laurence Fox ). Gustav escorts them to
11385-471: The siege. For Japan, the war began with the undeclared war and invasion of China in 1937 , which the Japanese authorities called "The China Incident". The government dispatched a "pen brigade" to write and film the action in China with "humanist values". Tomotaka Tasaka 's Mud and Soldiers (1939) for instance, shot on location in China, Kōzaburō Yoshimura 's Legend of Tank Commander Nishizumi , and Sato Takeshi 's Chocolate and Soldiers (1938) show
11500-461: The story is based on incidents from his own life. The Iraq War served as the background story of U.S. movies, like The Hurt Locker from 2008, Green Zone from 2010, and American Sniper from 2014. The War in Afghanistan since 2001 was depicted in various movies, among them Restrepo in 2010 and Lone Survivor from 2013. The first popular Allied war films made during
11615-541: The story that its audience is left to discuss and reflect upon. Traditionally, fiction includes novels, short stories, fables , legends , myths , fairy tales , epic and narrative poetry , plays (including operas , musicals , dramas, puppet plays , and various kinds of theatrical dances ). However, fiction may also encompass comic books , and many animated cartoons , stop motions , anime , manga , films , video games , radio programs , television programs ( comedies and dramas ), etc. The Internet has had
11730-448: The study of genre fiction has developed within academia in recent decades. The term is sometimes used such as to equate literary fiction to literature. The accuracy of this is debated. Neal Stephenson has suggested that, while any definition will be simplistic, there is today a general cultural difference between literary and genre fiction. On the one hand literary authors nowadays are frequently supported by patronage, with employment at
11845-541: The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor . The film, panned by Roger Ebert and The New York Times , was a major success in Japan. Its realistic-looking attack footage was reused in later films such as Midway (1976), The Final Countdown (1980), and Australia (2008). The story was revisited in Pearl Harbor (2001), described by The New York Times as a "noisy, expensive and very long new blockbuster", with
11960-402: The suspension of civilian morality during times of war, b) primacy of collective goals over individual motivations, c) rivalry between men in predominantly male groups as well as marginalization and objectification of women, and d) depiction of the reintegration of veterans. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war films often end with them. The film critic Stephen Neale suggests that
12075-509: The time of the work's creation: Jules Verne 's novel From the Earth to the Moon was published in 1865, but only in 1969 did astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to land on the Moon. Historical fiction places imaginary characters into real historical events. In the 1814 historical novel Waverley , Sir Walter Scott 's fictional character Edward Waverley meets
12190-535: The traditional view that fiction and non-fiction are opposites, some works (particularly in the modern era) blur this boundary, particularly works that fall under certain experimental storytelling genres—including some postmodern fiction , autofiction , or creative nonfiction like non-fiction novels and docudramas —as well as the deliberate literary fraud of falsely marketing fiction as nonfiction. Furthermore, even most works of fiction usually have elements of, or grounding in, truth of some kind, or truth from
12305-516: The war and was made in cooperation with the Army Air Corps. It proved a powerful recruiting tool. It became the first film (in any genre) to be awarded an Oscar for best picture. Later films of varied genres that deal with the First World War include David Lean 's "colossal epic", both war film and biopic Lawrence of Arabia (1962), shot in the then unfamiliar and exciting 70mm Technicolor , and described by Steven Spielberg as "maybe
12420-493: The war effort, and a degree of propaganda. Newsreels , ostensibly simply for information, were made in both Allied and Axis countries, and were often dramatised. More recently, in the Iran–Iraq War , Morteza Avini 's Ravayat-e Fath (Chronicles of Victory) television series combined front-line footage with commentary. Sergei Eisenstein 's 1938 historical drama Alexander Nevsky depicts Prince Alexander 's defeat of
12535-675: The war film in specific theatres such as the Western Desert of North Africa and the Pacific in the Second World War, Vietnam , or the Soviet–Afghan War ; and films set in specific domains of war, such as the infantry, the air, at sea, in submarines or at prisoner of war camps. The war film genre is not necessarily tightly defined: the American Film Institute , for example, speaks of "films to grapple with
12650-467: The war film lacks the formal boundaries of a genre like the Western , but that in practice, "successful and influential" war films are about modern wars, in particular World War II, with the combination of mobile forces and mass killing. The film scholar Kathryn Kane points out some similarities between the war film genre and the Western. Both genres use opposing concepts like war and peace, civilization and savagery. War films usually frame World War II as
12765-699: The war years" — Millions Like Us (1943), and The Way Ahead (1944). In America, documentaries were produced in various ways: General Marshall commissioned the Why We Fight propaganda series from Frank Capra; the War Department's Information-Education Division started out making training films for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy; the Army made its own through the U.S. Signal Corps, including John Huston 's The Battle of San Pietro . Hollywood made films with propaganda messages about America's allies, such as Mrs. Miniver (1942), which portrayed
12880-472: Was closely associated with history and myth . Greek poets such as Homer , Hesiod , and Aesop developed fictional stories that were told first through oral storytelling and then in writing. Prose fiction was developed in Ancient Greece , influenced by the storytelling traditions of Asia and Egypt. Distinctly fictional work was not recognized as separate from historical or mythological stories until
12995-594: Was described by the Motion Picture News as "a really good war story, which is exceptional". The 1916 British film The Battle of the Somme , by two official cinematographers, Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, combined documentary and propaganda, seeking to give the public an impression of what trench warfare was like. Much of the film was shot on location at the Western Front in France; it had
13110-557: Was followed by large-scale but thoughtful films like Andrei Tarkovsky 's Ivan's Childhood (1962), and quasi- documentary all-star epics filmed in Europe such as Battle of the Bulge (1965), Battle of Britain (1969), The Battle of Neretva (1969), Midway (1976), and A Bridge Too Far (1977). In Lawrence Suid's view, The Longest Day "served as the model for all subsequent combat spectaculars". However, its cost also made it
13225-451: Was made during the Korean War (1950–1953). The critic Guy Westwell notes that it questioned the conduct of the war, as did later films like The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) and Pork Chop Hill (1959). Fuller agreed that all his films were anti-war. No Hollywood films about the Korean War did well at the box office; the historian Lary May suggested in 2001 that they reminded American viewers of "the only war we have lost". In 1955, after
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